Memory: Portals and Thresholds

The brain is a mysterious organ.  Medical people are the first to admit although they know an iota of its workings, for the most part, it's a mystery.  Why, for example does a historically belligerent psychopath become docile and non-manipulative after sustaining a brain injury?  Reasoning brings us to our anatomy and physiology texts to understand better why damage to one aspect of the brain jump-starts another part, changing personality sometimes in the process. 

There are lots of reasons and speculations behind what happens in the world of Alzheimer or dementia patients.  Those of us with experience working with people with memory challenges do a lot of watching and surmising.  But we really don't know what a person with this type of brain change is going through.  We can speculate, but we don't really know. Understanding that there is an atrophying in the synapses of the brain which impact neuro-transmission is information, but that knowledge does little to support the relationship at hand. Occasionally, there will be a moment when the portal door of their world opens up to the outside and one  sees the terror of their situation (only for a moment).  Something else is required.  In our trying to understand their reality, we can often end up becoming extremely limited in our observations, possibly because it's impossible to have a fixed knowing for ourselves in regards to their reality (and any one's reality if the truth be told).

The fact is, we are breathing the same air, eating the same food, but living extremely different realities (or are we?). As a dear mentor of old used to tell me, "What can you trust?  Most aspects of oneself are wholly unreliable.  But there is usually something which can be relied upon, something one can trust in oneself." Whereas brain function in the memory-challenged is mostly fully unreliable (and getting more so all the time), the experience and understanding the world through the experience of energy can almost always be trusted.  Much like a sense that has been lost, other senses pick up the sensitivity and awareness.  Hearing becomes more acute for the blind, touch and sight becomes acute for the deaf.  Possibly, energy awareness becomes larger when any part of the body loses function, especially mental capacity. Again, it is possible the body circumnavigates its loss into a win of sorts.

Most Chinese temples and ancient abodes  have elevated (about 18 inch) thresholds.  Legend says these raised thresholds were meant to trip up bad spirits from entering the temple. In this day and age this myth might serve to remind us to remember (the best parts of) ourselves as we high-step into the new territory of space.  And like the many maladies that will strike us over a lifetime, loss of  memory is that new space, whether it be our own or somebody else.

Having information or knowledge about the disease process or the function of the brain system is just that, its information.  Unfortunately its not all that helpful in having a relationship with memory challenged people.  Being with someone with memory changes requires another aspect of ourselves other then the part of us that is trying to figure him/her/the expression out, a part that isn't so entrenched in one's own reality.  It's an opportunity to high step it over that threshold and straddle both realities;  my own which I (delusionally) believe to be infallible and an other, seemingly anchored in a suspension of time and place.  Humble meets humanity and there is a breath.

Ego-comfort often demands of us to assume much.  For the ego, it's comforting to imagine what we think another is going through, thinking or feeling.  That is our sentimentality showing through, a type of romanticizing of the condition, probably due to the paradoxically perceived realities-- theirs and ones own.  It's also ego's self-soothing mechanism to believe my reality is somewhat more "real" than a memory-changing other.  The truth is their reality is just as real for them as mine is for me.  I need to find in myself that which can accept this.  Otherwise, energetically I will always read as patronizing to the mentally challenged and that would be an insurmountable obstacle to making a trust relationship with them. When approached energetically, other's manifestation is taken in differently because one's own approach has become different.  One becomes less concerned about cognitively understanding the sometimes startling behavior or pattern of thought ("lack of reason" as ego knows it) and more concerned with meeting the energy field of oneself and the other. 

This idea of seeing another through the momentary portals that materialize, stepping over those high thresholds to meet another requires a willingness to suspend one's entrenched belief in what reality is.
This approach calls for us to be more open, cultivate an intrigue and wonder of what is there, an energetic being who Is and the shared time.  Memory lapses are real, but they become less "the thing" to notice and more the terrain that is tread.  Attention is in the life present, not necessarily the organic manifestation.

Threshold  

By R. S. Thomas
 

I emerge from the mind’s

cave into the worse darkness

outside, where things pass and

the Lord is in none of them.

I have heard the still, small voice

and it was that of the bacteria

demolishing my cosmos. I

have lingered too long on

this threshold, but where can I go?

To look back is to lose the soul

I was leading upwards towards

the light. To look forward? Ah,

what balance is needed at

the edges of such an abyss.

I am alone on the surface

of a turning planet. What

to do but, like Michelangelo’s

Adam, put my hand

out into unknown space,

hoping for the reciprocating touch?